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By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 - 4 Comments »
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With Due Respect…

It’s almost impossible to decipher who is the john and who is the whore when it comes to the “Hollywood Film Awards.”
I sometimes wonder why I haven’t launched the MCN Movie Awards and I think the answer is that I’m just not cynical enough yet.

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4 Comments »

4 Responses to “With Due Respect…”

  1. LYT says:
    October 27, 2009 at 12:06 pm

    Someone asked me the other night what the deal was with the Hollywood Film Festival. I know it’s never been considered to have serious credibility, yet big names show up.
    Is there an article you’ve done before laying out the case against it that I could use for reference next time the topic comes up?

  3. David Poland says:
    October 27, 2009 at 3:30 pm

    Luke – HFF is a minor, albeit profitable, event.
    I like Carlos, even if he is selling snake oil with his event. He is, actually, not unwilling to reach higher. But he is looked down at by too many people who are those who would be able to help him raise the bar. In addition, the festival is in direct competition with AFI, hammocked between AFI and NYFF, making the festival part meaningless in any real way… except for filmmakers who have movies there.
    It is simple. He has created another opportunity for awards players to play… another press opp… and the press cooperates, so it works for them. It’s a pay-to-play event, not unlike National Board of Review and, on some level, HFPA.
    The irony of Carlos is that he honors all categories, which no one else does. So it is the shiniest place, pre-Oscar and specific guilds, to honor costumers and cinematographers and comedy and sfx, etc.
    In the end, it is not mean spirited. Just meaningless.
    Media coverage is the media’s fault, not Carlos’.
    “The sponsors of the Hollywood Film Festival include presenter sponsor Starz Entertainment, and Always On, American Cinema Editors, American Society of Cinematographers, ArcLight Cinemas, Celebrity Services, Creative Artists Agency, Entertainment Tonight, Focus Features, Fox Searchlight, ILM, Michael Kors, Los Angeles Times, Miramax, Motion Picture Editors Guild, Sony Classics, Universal Pictures, Variety, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros., The Weinstein Company and YAHOO! Movies, Inc., among others.”
    Note: LA Times, Variety, Yahoo! Movies. That’s why you haven’t heard Anne mouthing off about it before.

  4. LYT says:
    October 27, 2009 at 3:45 pm

    Interesting they have the Arclight on board. None of the other big fests seem to want to work with Arclight any more.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon